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Extreme Winter Weather In the US Linked To a Warming Arctic (theverge.com)
A new study shows how global climate change can have ripple effects at the local level. According to the research, extreme winter weather is two to four times more likely in the eastern U.S. when the Arctic is unusually warm. The Verge reports: Researchers analyzed a variety of atmospheric data in the Arctic, as well as how severe winter weather was in 12 cities across the U.S. from 1950 to 2016. Since 1990, as the Arctic has been warming up and losing ice, extreme cold snaps and heavy snow in the winter have been two to four times more frequent in the eastern U.S. and the Midwest, while in the western U.S., their frequency has decreased, according to a study published today in Nature Communications. The study, however, only shows there might be a correlation -- not a direct causal link -- between the warming Arctic and severe winters in the U.S. And it doesn't show how exactly the two are connected, so it doesn't really add much to what scientists already knew, according to several experts.
Today's study focuses on the Arctic as the main culprit for the extreme winter weather. Previous research has suggested that the warming Arctic may disrupt the polar vortex, a ring of swirling cold air circling the North Pole. Think of the polar vortex as a river, says study co-author Judah Cohen, a climatologist and director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research. The fast flow of this river locks up the cold air over the Arctic. But as the Arctic warms -- especially in some areas like the Barents-Kara seas north of Europe and Russia -- a boulder springs up in this river, disrupting the polar vortex and allowing the freezing Arctic air to flow south, Cohen says.
Today's study focuses on the Arctic as the main culprit for the extreme winter weather. Previous research has suggested that the warming Arctic may disrupt the polar vortex, a ring of swirling cold air circling the North Pole. Think of the polar vortex as a river, says study co-author Judah Cohen, a climatologist and director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research. The fast flow of this river locks up the cold air over the Arctic. But as the Arctic warms -- especially in some areas like the Barents-Kara seas north of Europe and Russia -- a boulder springs up in this river, disrupting the polar vortex and allowing the freezing Arctic air to flow south, Cohen says.
Climate change doesn't care whether you believe in it or not
They defined extreme weather under the Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index which looks primarily at rapid changes in temperature and unusually heavy snowfalls. The metric is a standard one you can find more about here http://mrcc.isws.illinois.edu/research/awssi/indexAwssi.jsp. Note that the AWSSI does not include wind, general precipitation, or most unusually high temperature events.
Creating a hypothesis based on observation (explaining past events) IS science. It's part of the scientific method. A real scientist would take that hypothesis, test it (predictions and further observation), refine the hypothesis further and further. Just because something is difficult to predict doesn't mean you are not doing science.
"Being able to explain, what already happened does not make you a scientist."
Well, that's cosmologists fucked then. And geologists, anyone who works on evolution, continental drift... Good to know that none of us are scientists.
Although that's a legitimate point of view in the sense of being internally consistent, it excludes a large number of scientific investigations. According to your definition, neither forensic pathologists nor historians would do science or be scientists. Fair enough, so they are doing science-2 and nothing is lost, because everybody already agrees that primarily historic, explaining disciplines are different from physics and chemistry. Obviously, mathematics is also not science according to your definition. Well, Alfred Nobel thought so, too, but in the end you're just arguing about terminology, which is pointless.
Being able to explain, what already happened does not make you a scientist.
Are you seriously claiming that paleontology is not a science? You might want to revisit that nice little straw man definition you have there. Just because something happened in the past does not mean it cannot be studied scientifically. Remember that the past is where we get literally ALL of our data for our scientific models.
To qualify, you have to be able to reliably predict, what will happen... And there, despite several decades of trying, the Climate Scientists have been no more successful than the Economists.
You may have meant that as an insult but it isn't. Economics does make testable predictions that routinely turn out to be true. They don't award Nobel Prizes in economics for lucky guesses. Just because a field is complicated and messy doesn't mean that they haven't had any success. I'm guessing you don't actually know any climate scientists nor are you actually familiar with any of their work that you so glibly disparage.
Pretty much all serious attempts at modelling global weather/climate points to one important correlation:
More heat (= more energy) in the atmosphere means that we get more extreme weather.
I think 2017 in particular but most years since 2000 have had a lot more (Carribean/US) hurricanes than what used to be normal.
Here in Norway we have had a bunch of warmer winters but also winters with far more precipitation which (when the weather is still cold enough) gives us more snow. At the main meteorological office here in Oslo the snow cover is within 2cm of the highest ever measured.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
So, our company contracts long-term weather forecasts from DTN, which is a company that produces weather outlook for industrial utilities and agriculture in the US and Europe. They use a variety of information to estimate future weather (monthly to decade scale), and in the process, comment on how current year weather matches historical weather. They look at multi-decade trends, and point out how this season is very similar to the 1950s, etc.
The comment in last quarter's winter forecast had to do with the "polar vortex" event that is leading to the "extreme" cold snaps across the US over the last 4 years or so. There are two factors at stake here, one being the "tightness" of the high-altitude wind currents around the arctic, and a secondary "rotation" effect. Imagine that there is an oval above the arctic that oscillates short and wide, mostly centered over the pole. The boundary is like a ripple that we see as wind currents. When it is circular, cold air is trapped up by the pole, and we have mild winters in the northern continents. However, over time, the polar winds oscillate north and south, which leads to daily oscillations in weather over the winter. What we see as large temperature swings are just the wind currents oscillating past.
If the oval becomes elongated, it allows the cold air to be pulled farther south, what we call the "polar vortex" with "abnormally" colder weather than average. Cold air is pulled down from the north, then hot air is pulled up from the south, and the intersection results in more winter storms than average, depending on humidity. But that dip pattern is also not stationary, it rotates on a multi-decade-long scale. In the 1990s, the polar vortex was over Russia / East Asia, and they observed the temperature swings. The North Americans (in our short-sightedness) think that if it didn't happen here, it didn't happen. But now two decades later, the elongation has rotated over us, and suddenly we're all freaking out about catastrophic weather changes.
The forecaster's point was all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.
No we haven't, in south Jersey there have been at least four big snow storms here that have closed schools, work, and highways. Normally we barely have to put on a sweater in the winter and barely get an inch of snow in January and that's it. Now we have a lot of deaths on the road by people who have never had to drive in such weather before.
Florida even got snow in December and twice in January.
Twinstiq, game news
So far
- more extreme weather worldwide [check]
- poles getting warmer, ice sheet melting [check]
- sea water temperature and level increased [check]
- all of these happening too quickly over the past century to be natural [check]
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
RTFA:
"Using a recently developed index of severe winter weather, we show that the occurrence of severe winter weather in the United States is significantly related to anomalies in pan-Arctic geopotential heights and temperatures" https://www.nature.com/article...
It often explains what's missing from a headline and summary....
You mean like to correlation between cholesterol and heart disease....
Paleontology could make a statement to the effect of: "We will find a fossil with such and such features".
I think that nicely shows that you have no idea what paleontologists do or how they do it.
Your argument regarding Economists is an "Appeal to Authority" fallacy
Not at all. Go read their papers because you clearly haven't. I have a graduate degree in finance and I've worked with many of the economic models you question. The models stand on their own and make perfectly valid and provable predictions. No appeal to authority needed. If you want to disprove them go right ahead. There is a Nobel prize waiting for you if you do.
Like that distinguished bunch, Climate Scientists too can explain anything, but are able to predict nothing.
Again you make fairly sweeping claims about a field of study you pretty clearly know nothing about. The climate scientists make predictions routinely and are proven to be accurate within the limitations of the model. If you think otherwise then you haven't actually examined any papers on the subject. Sure there is a lot they still don't know but that's true of every field of science. You also have to understand that it takes years for most predictions of climate models to be proven. But the evidence is there. Your failure to examine it does not make it less valid.
This just points out that we can't really rely on our existing models of global warming and the weather changes it might bring. The entire system is so complex that our current understanding of it is woefully incomplete. We're at the stage where, while we know a lot, there's still too much of 'we don't know what we don't know' for us to make detailed predictions with any confidence.
We need to be putting A LOT more money and effort into understanding and predicting these changes and their associated timeframes. First, we'll need to plan how to protect ourselves. Second, all that data and understanding will increase our chances of finding and evaluating safe ways to slow, and perhaps reverse, AGW.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
You left out the 80F day in February, first in recorded history and that cold spell in the beginning of January.
Thank you for the post!
It's been a long time since I've seen a Slashdot post that was informative and not critically partisan.
Whether your conclusion is right or wrong makes no difference - that can be discussed. It was a great post.
I've noticed even in my remote city that climate change is hitting us hard. In the last few years, we've seen a massive increase in sever downpours that I'm sure didn't happen in my youth. It's caused almost a million dollar deficit in the city funds because of all the upgrades they've had to make to handle these new storms so I definitely notice a change.
And to be honest it's not that hard to battle climate change, even small efforts help a lot. I've switched all my lights to high quality LEDs for example, it's lowered my power bill, bulbs never burn out. I couldn't afford a pure electric car and they don't work too well in my cold climate so I ended up getting a Volt and it works. It runs gas free through the entire summer almost. But the key is folks need to try. Too many folks seem to think they can't change and sadly many of these efforts end up saving time and money as well.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?